1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to electronic mail systems and, more particularly, the invention relates to a method, article of manufacture and apparatus for deleting electronic mail documents.
2. Background of the Related Art
In today""s electronic mail (e-mail) environment, many users often utilize a xe2x80x9creply with historyxe2x80x9d feature to reply or forward an e-mail message with the contents of a received e-mail message. The reply with history feature is used to send an e-mail document having a primary message from the sender and contained messages previously received by the sender. The primary message and contained messages form a history of messages or a message sequence in the e-mail document. As such, such an e-mail document provides a flow of ideas and information among users.
However, repeated application or utilization of the reply with history feature may lead to many e-mail documents having a long history of contained e-mail messages. In particular, a recipient or user may often accumulate extraneous e-mail documents over time. Moreover, these e-mail documents are likely to accumulate if the e-mail documents covered an important subject, e.g., e-mail documents are accumulated over the duration of an essential business project. In this case, the user would need to consider whether to delete each accumulated e-mail document individually. As such, the user is required to waste a substantial amount of time, particularly if the user opens each of the accumulated e-mail documents on an individual basis.
Therefore, a need exists for a method, article of manufacture and apparatus for assisting in a determination of which e-mail documents to delete.
The invention provides a method, article of manufacture and apparatus for deleting electronic mail (e-mail) documents. Specifically, the method comprises selecting a first e-mail document having a primary message and at least one contained message, determining whether a second e-mail document is substantially similar to one of the contained messages, and deleting the first e-mail document and the second e-mail document if the second mail document is substantially similar to one of the contained messages. As such, one embodiment of the method not only deletes the selected e-mail document, but also e-mail documents that are substantially similar to one of the contained messages.
In another embodiment, the invention also provides an apparatus comprising a memory and a processing unit, where the apparatus is configured for deleting e-mail documents. The memory stores a plurality of e-mail documents and a delete routine.
The processing unit executes the delete routine retrieved from the memory, selects a first electronic mail document having a primary message and at least one contained message, determines whether other e-mail documents are substantially similar to one of the contained messages, and deletes the selected e-mail document. The other e-mail documents are deleted if the other e-mail documents are substantially similar to one of the contained messages.
Additionally, a computer readable medium storing a software program is provided, where the software program, when executed by a computer, causes the computer to perform a method. In one embodiment of the computer readable medium, the method comprises selecting a first electronic mail document having a primary message and at least one contained message, identifying a second electronic mail document that is substantially similar to one of the contained messages, and deleting the first electronic mail document and the second electronic mail document if the second electronic mail document is substantially similar to one of the contained messages.